


I know the tears we cry have dried on yesterday

by coffeesuperhero



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-07
Updated: 2011-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-20 05:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is too much history between them tonight, he thinks, and yet, hardly any at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I know the tears we cry have dried on yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimers** : This isn't for profit, just for fun. All characters & situations belong to Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, BBC, and their various subsidiaries. Title from a song by Jeff Buckley, which I also had nothing to do with.  
>  **A/N** : Spoilers for **everything including 6x07**. Thanks to [leiascully](http://leiascully.livejournal.com) and [pocky_slash](http://pocky_slash.livejournal.com) for looking this over!

When she kisses him, it takes him quite by surprise. It's not unlike the first time, though from her perspective, he supposes, this is, in fact, the first time she's kissed him, and it's just this side of unfair, isn't it, that she has surprised him now just like she will have done, however many years from now in her future, his past.

"That was unexpected," he says, and she smiles.

"About time, more like," she says warmly. She starts off down a tree-lined path, the buildings of the university rising behind them. "It was my graduation present to myself, now that I'm finally _Doctor_ River Song. I've had a mad crush on you since I was twenty, you know."

"No, I didn't know that," he confesses, and it's true. He has never known how they began, for all she would ever say on the subject was, "Spoilers," and though he was certain that it had been her move, her decision, he has never wanted to press the issue, as certain as he has always been that their odd little timeline would mean that the beginning was also the end. He wonders if that's where they are now.

"You dazzle people, you know," she's saying, and he stops puzzling over their timestreams and listens. "I'm no exception. But it took me a long time to see you for who you are, to see the man behind all the stories and the legends, to love you instead of the idea of you."

"And who am I, then," he murmurs, shuffling along beside her. "To you."

"You're my Doctor, of course. No more, no less. So much bound up in one little word." River studies his face, shadowed in the moonlight. "This isn't the first time I've kissed you," she says, like it's a fact, like she knows, and probably she does, he thinks, because it's probably written all over his face.

"No," he replies, thinking of Stormcage, long ago, before he knew much of anything about her aside from her cleverness and her hair and her marksmanship. There's been far too much sadness for her since then, though it is something of a comfort to know that she lives through it, that she becomes a person he cannot imagine facing down an army without. Though perhaps, he thinks, looking at her now, that is who she is, already.

"You didn't make some sort of ridiculous promise, did you," she says, narrowing her eyes at him, "to my parents, about me. Because they should have known better than to-"

He holds up his hand, interrupting. "I promised to always keep you safe," he says, and he wants to protest, to tell her not to love him, not to know him. She ordered him, years from now, years ago, to let these moments be written, to watch them run through all those precious finite years of time and space that they had already been allotted, but now that he has come to the start of it all, now that he has known the pain and the heartbreak of losing her, now that he has seen that same pain in the faces of his dearest friends, he finds it infinitely harder to acquiesce to her final request, to spare her the library, if he can, even if it means that all his memories are for nothing. "I promised them on my life, that you'd be safe."

"You've done a bang-up job of that," she laughs, and he hopes she doesn't notice the way he winces. There is too much history between them tonight, he thinks, and yet, hardly any at all. She continues on, either unaware of his discomfiture or blessedly ignoring it. "I shudder to think how you'd have fared on that last trip if I hadn't been along."

"Yes, yes, you're a person of inestimable value in any situation," he says, tucking his hands into his pockets. They turn down a side lane on the university grounds, walking in silence for awhile through the gardens.

"Has it ever been strange, knowing everything that you know, about me? Watching this happen backwards?" she asks, pausing under a trellis covered in starblossoms, blooming out in all directions, reaching for the starlight, growing, changing, surviving.

Something is different, something has been different since he arrived here earlier today, but he hasn't been able to work it out until just now. _She_ is different. She looks like River, now, like the woman who stole into the belly of a Category IV starliner just to write him a message in Old High Gallifreyan, this beautiful confusing mystery that chased him across galaxies and eons unnumbered. The pictures of her in his memory have finally caught up with her, and as she stands there, her hand resting on her hip while she waits for his answer, he wonders if she planned all of this in advance, the two of them strolling in the moonlight like a pair of starcrossed young lovers. It would be rather like her, he decides. It's her show, and it always has been. She clears her throat, calling him back to this present, this reality. "Doctor?"

"Yes," he says honestly, bobbing up and down on his heels, hands clasped behind his back. "And no. It's all very odd, I suppose, if you're not me, or you. We're complicated space-time events, you and I. When I met you, a long long time ago, I didn't know anything at all about you, which was terribly infuriating, as you can well imagine."

"You do like to know everything," she laughs, and he has a momentary desire to stick his tongue out at her, but he suppresses it in favor of continuing on before he loses this train of thought and starts babbling about her hair in the moonlight or something equally ridiculous.

"It's something of a birthright, knowing things," he tells her, and she rolls her eyes. "The point is that for me, from my perspective, I loved you a long time from now, River Song, before I had any idea who you were, before you ever met me, and by the time I met you, you already knew that I had done. For you, we were a foregone conclusion; for me, we were a rather wonderful surprise. And you were brave and clever and kind, if a bit trigger-happy, as they say, though there have been a very few situations where I suppose that has been somewhat useful, but forget that I said that, please and thank you, and where was I?"

"My past, I believe," she observes, not even bothering to hide her amusement.

"Right. Look. It's like...," he fishes in the air for some kind of comparison, settling finally for a familiar one. "It's like looking at a whole album full of photographs of someone from the time before you knew them, knowing who they'll be some day in their future, but not knowing who they _are_. So it's been you, but not the you that I first met, and it has been a privilege and a delight, knowing other versions of you, but I haven't seen you like this since the first time I met you, and so I imagine, my dear Doctor Song, that this is the start of it all."

"Past is prologue, for me," she says, and he nods. She looks up at him sadly. "Is this it, for you? My firsts; your lasts? The end in the beginning?"

"I don't know," he lies, knowing that he has at least one stop left, far in her future, a journey he's been putting off since he met her, waiting until he knows their whole story. He does not want to go to the singing towers; he does not want to see the end.

But River, dear, clever River, who already knows that he does not always tell the whole truth, shakes her head at him, and in his mind her words echo back from a time when he had a different face. _It's okay, it's okay. It's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come._ He aches, remembering it all, but there is joy there too, mingled with all the sorrow. He wants to repeat her words to her now, to reassure her that from her point of view they have so much time, even if all of it has almost run out for him, but he can't help wanting to warn her, to change her mind.

"River. I can't begin to tell you how difficult it can be. So many of my yesterdays have been fought for love of you, but that's your future, and it's not all wine and roses, it's running and fighting and it's not always winning, and there are so many good things, but there are bad things too, and I'd spare you all of it if I could, I'd spare you all my forgetting, all the pain from this strange backwards life that we lead, that we already have lead, and you'll hate me for daring to say this, but I'll hate myself even more than I already have if I don't, so River, please, for me, at least consider this: _time can be rewritten_ ," he says, his words a simultaneous prayer and lamentation. He doesn't even realize that he's crying until she reaches up and brushes the tears from his face, holding her hand there, waiting, deciding.

River stares at him for a long moment, so long that he feels she is reading her future in the worry he cannot chase away from his face. "Not these times," she says finally, her voice just as fierce and resolute now as it was then. She takes her hand away from his face and grips both of his hands tightly in her own. "Not one line. I wouldn't dare. You and me, my love: time and space. What do you say?"

He looks into her face and reads hope there, and he knows, of course he knows, what his answer must be. It would be the height of selfishness to rob her of the rest of her life, the joy and the pain of it, and it is not his right to do so. It is as much her story as it is his.

"I say yes," he whispers, because he already has, and he will, again, for her, because it was what she wanted then, and what she wants now. "I'll watch us run."


End file.
